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Plan to Capture an Asteroid Runs Into Politics

An artist's concept of what an asteroid capturing system could look like.Credit
NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab

It is known, informally, as the asteroid-lasso plan: NASA wants to launch an unmanned spacecraft in 2018 that would capture a small asteroid — maybe 7 to 10 yards wide — haul it closer to Earth, then send astronauts up to examine it, in 2021 or beyond.

But the space agency has encountered a stubborn technical problem: Congressional Republicans.

Normally, there is bipartisan support (or disapproval) in Congress for NASA’s bolder plans, particularly when they involve human spaceflight. What squabbling does take place tends to pit lawmakers from states with big NASA presences, like Florida and Texas, against those with fewer vested interests.

This month, however, the science committee in the Republican-controlled House voted to bar NASA from pursuing that faraway rock. In a straight party vote — 22 Republicans for, 17 Democrats against — the committee laid out a road map for NASA for the next three years that brushed aside the asteroid capture plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s agenda for space exploration. The plan, instead, included new marching orders, telling NASA to send astronauts back to the Moon, set up a base there and then aim for Mars (and to do so with less money than requested).

“A costly and complex distraction,” is how one Republican critic, Representative Steven Palazzo of Mississippi, described the asteroid mission. Other legislators complained that the project seemed far-fetched and poorly articulated, and that it would not advance America’s bragging rights in space the way a return to the Moon could. The bill awaits a vote by the full House.

NASA and its rocket scientists are trying to figure out how to proceed.

President Obama had asked them to find a way to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. They presented their plan in April, describing it, perhaps immodestly, as a way to “protect our planet” from dangerous asteroids in addition to making strides in human spaceflight.

A non-NASA study had estimated the total cost of capturing and redirecting an asteroid at $2.6 billion. New analysis by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is in charge of the robotic part of the mission, put the cost at perhaps half that — $1 billion plus the cost of the rocket, said Charles Elachi, the laboratory’s director.

“It allows us to get to an asteroid four years ahead of time,” said Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, a former astronaut and a proponent of the asteroid plan.

Mr. Nelson, like NASA officials, ticked off other possible benefits: The agency would learn how to push around heavy objects in space, which could help if a large asteroid were on a collision course with Earth; and NASA would develop technologies like thinner, lighter solar panels that would be useful for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s.

“And the fourth thing it does is, if it ends up an interesting asteroid, then we’ve got the possibility of the science of mining an asteroid,” Mr. Nelson said.

The proposal, unveiled in April as part of Mr. Obama’s budget, is far from dead. On Tuesday, a committee in the Democrat-controlled Senate is scheduled to work on its version of the bill, one that makes no mention of capturing asteroids but gives leeway to NASA to do whatever it thinks best for getting to Mars. On the same day, experts will convene at NASA headquarters in Washington to review work on the asteroid mission so far.

As yet, those experts have not pinpointed an asteroid to kidnap, but the idea is this: First, build a robotic spacecraft with a novel inflatable cone-shaped structure that could envelop the asteroid (which will be tricky to catch, because it will probably be spinning). Next, meet the space rock as it swings by the vicinity of the Earth and the Moon. Then, after essentially wrapping the asteroid in a bag (no lassos are actually involved), the spacecraft would lug it into orbit above the Moon, a slow do-si-do of mechanics that could take a few years.

“Over all, I think this is a very doable mission,” said Brian Muirhead, the chief engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

After that, astronauts would travel aboard a giant new rocket that NASA is designing, to meet the asteroid for a closer look. Their trip would give NASA the opportunity to test its deep-space spacecraft, the Orion capsule, as well as its procedures for helping astronauts work with asteroids, which have almost no gravity.

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Asteroids have been having their moment in the news, in part because of the terrifying asteroid explosion over Russia in February, which injured about 1,500 people. Last month, NASA announced an Asteroid Grand Challenge, inviting people and organizations to collaborate in finding asteroids that threaten Earth and proposing solutions. On Friday, the agency said it had received more than 400 responses to the challenge and suggestions to help with the asteroid capture mission.

Separately, at least two private companies have announced intentions to mine asteroids for rare metals, arguing that supplies on Earth are dwindling.

There is near unanimity in Congress and NASA that the ultimate goal is to send people to Mars, but the logistical challenges and costs are too big to conquer right away. NASA officials depict the asteroid capture plan as an elegant interim step, one that would send humans deeper into space than before and break new ground in rocket technology.

But Republicans on the House science committee complained this month that the proposal came “out of the blue,” lacking much explanation from NASA officials, support from scientists or cost analysis. Some Democrats on the committee were also skeptical, but most were willing to hear NASA out.

“I was never very excited about it,” said Representative Donna F. Edwards of Maryland, a Democrat on the committee. However, she was much more critical of the Republican alternative that passed.

To some Democrats, the Republican objections came across as part of a larger strategy to block Mr. Obama on all fronts.

“I really thought that was really a direct insult to the president,” said Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

Historically, NASA’s bipartisan support in Congress dates to its founding in 1958 in the aftermath of Russia’s launching of Sputnik. And it is far too soon to say whether the House Republicans’ objections will ultimately scuttle the asteroid plan. But some longtime NASA observers wonder if the differing views can coalesce to give NASA clear marching orders.

“As long as the Republicans control the House and Mr. Obama is president, I don’t think that agreement will happen, and we’ll just muddle through,” said John M. Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Meanwhile, Democrats say that the current House bill, the NASA Authorization Act of 2013, would give the agency an impossible mission, reviving expensive ambitions to send astronauts back to the Moon while proposing to cut NASA’s budget to $16.6 billion for the next fiscal year, down from $17.8 billion appropriated this year. Republicans have taken the position that spending plans should take into account the current budget sequester. The Senate authorization bill, being taken up this week, proposes $18.1 billion for NASA.

Given the fiscal climate, the Republicans’ Moon ambitions are just not possible, according to Louis D. Friedman, a former executive director of the Planetary Society, a nonprofit group that promotes space exploration.

“Frankly, it comes down to this or nothing,” Dr. Friedman said, referring to the asteroid plan. “This at least does everything we need in the American space program at a price we can afford while we debate when we are going to make those bigger commitments.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 30, 2013, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Plan to Capture an Asteroid Runs Into Politics. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe